Infectious parasites made me do it.
We're at "the cat's acting kind of funny" stage of revelation.
>This special issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology highlights some of the best-understood examples of parasite-induced changes in host brain and behavior, encompassing both invertebrate and vertebrate hosts and micro- and macro-parasites. The observation that parasitic infection can modify specific host behaviors is an old one (see Moore, 2002). The general consensus has been that these parasites have evolved the ability to manipulate host behavior in order to advance their own reproductive success (
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/1/1
After "acting kind of funny” stage comes "I think the cat's sick, he's up on the roof puking"
>Neuro-parasitology is an emerging branch of science that deals with parasites that can control the nervous system of the host. It offers the possibility of discovering how one species (the parasite) modifies a particular neural network, and thus particular behaviors, of another species (the host). Such parasite–host interactions, developed over millions of years of evolution, provide unique tools by which one can determine how neuromodulation up-or-down regulates specific behaviors. In some of the most fascinating manipulations, the parasite taps into the host brain neuronal circuits to manipulate hosts cognitive functions. To name just a few examples, some worms induce crickets and other terrestrial insects to commit suicide in water, enabling the exit of the parasite into an aquatic environment favorable to its reproduction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasite
Everything in nature has an abstract correlate. There are viruses and parasite inimical to life in material space which have corresponding structures in computational and mental space.
What is a messenger protein? It is a description of itself (it's reflexive) it is also a command. "Prepare to repel boarders," or "Screw antibodies, make more of these."
Biological network comms all about identity and security. We can never trust anonymous information. Parasites make complex efforts to fool host communications, to forge host signals to inject information to mislead and/or exploit host blind spots.
Nature is parsimonious and we see the same deceptive tactics employed in micro and nano environments used for the same purposes at meso and macro scales.
Take the Nab Shub. They are Sumerian texts which have the properties of reflexive self desription described above. Nam Shub not only describe/identify themselves, they also carry instruction which must be obeyed, consciously or otherwise.
A famous Nam Shub is the "Nam Shub of Enki" which Neal Stephenson wrote about in SNOWCRASH.
Stephenson's book was fiction, but manipulation of human consciousness and behavior by means of infectious self-replicating structures is not. The use of harmful, behavior changing images, sigils and glyphs which act below the threshold of consumer awareness, is what the advertising industry does.
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Who would care enough about these biological curiosities, behavior altering parasites, to research them?
Doctah Sid Gottlieb head of C_A tech services would.
https://www.mdma.net/mk-ultra/index.html
Doctor Sid Gottlieb made Dr Strangelove look like a chartreuse drinking, carnation sporting, street poofter.
Sidney Gottlieb, the fiendish C_A tech services chief, was the fictional Doctor Benway in the works of William S. Burroughs.(The character and name was appropriated for what was perhaps the first online persona ever recognized. This virtual character posted on the Community Memory BBS, the first electronically accessible bulletin board system).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Benway
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